Last night's episode of 'Louie' (Tue., 11PM ET on FX) was a weird one. There's no way to sugarcoat it. The show's been experimental in nature through the entire season, but last night it went off the comedy grid, so to speak.

Most of the episode involved Louis C.K. flashing back to his days as a kid in Catholic school, and how the battle ax of a teacher he had decided to demonstrate to Louie's class how Jesus died for their sins.

What we get is a graphic description of how Jesus was tortured and how much he suffered on the cross, thanks to a creepy doctor that should be enshrined in the Creepy TV Doctor Hall of Fame (good job by Tom Noonan there). This gives little Louie nightmares, which leads him back to the church to "free" Jesus, which the same battle ax nun decried as "vandalism," never connecting the horrific lesson she just taught with her student's actions.

Luckily, it seems that Louie's mom (at least we think it's his mom... more on that in a bit) had more sense than the nun did, as she talked some pragmatic and practical sense into her frightened and confused son.

"You are not bad. I am telling you this, you're a good kid. You make mistakes and you do bad things sometimes because I'm not done raising you," she told him. "But you're a good person."

When Louie asks her about why Jesus had to die for Louie's sins, his mom reassured him that the story wasn't all it was cracked up to be. "If you ask me, this whole thing is a big cover-up. The whole thing is a bunch of ... malarkey."

So if she didn't believe in any of it, why is little Louie in Catholic school? "I don't know... I thought I was selfish. Just because I don't have religion, not to give it to you? I mean, it's a big deal, religion. You might want it someday. But if I thought it was going to stress you out this much, I wouldn't have done it.

"All I know is that you have to be good to people, whether there is or isn't (a God). You have to take that on yourself. No one's going to be watching whether you're good or not except yourself. It's all on you."

This is Louis C.K.'s way of explaining why the paunchy comedian we see before us now can make jokes about how much of a dick God is but still be good to his friends, his kids, and pretty much anyone else that comes in his path, even the parents of teenage bullies. It's because he had parents -- or at least his mom -- who didn't try to give him pat, definitive answers, because they didn't have them. These were people who did the best they could raising their kids, and didn't try to hide that fact from him.

Then again, it may not have been an actual flashback or his actual mother. Remember, it wasn't long ago that he told his horrible mother that he doesn't love her. And his mother was such a narcissist that it's hard to believe that she and the woman in this flashback are the same person. Also, we see flashes of the adult Louie writhing in bed at the same time as the young Louie as he contemplates all of his sins.

But the biggest clue that this may have all been a dream was that the oh-so-pragmatic mother is played by Amy Landecker, the same woman who played Sandra, the woman who rejected Louie after he backed down from the bully. So all of this weirdness could be Louis C.K.'s sly way to see if viewers are paying attention, as elements from his recent experiences are incorporated in his dreams.

I hope that my convoluted explanation is true, otherwise the inconsistency between this version of Louie's mom and the one that we've already seen doesn't make any sense.

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